John Irving Quotes

Right and wrong as moral principles do not change. They are applicable and reliable determinants whether the situations with which we deal are simple or complicated. There is always a right and wrong to every question which requires our solution.

I don't want to do anything that violates my own personal code of ethics and morals.

Ethics are more important than laws.

One needs to know what is right and what is wrong.

The very essence of our civilization is that we give a paramount place to morality in all our affairs, public or private.

Call me old-fashioned, but I believe that morality is not just a matter of opinion.

At times, morality can be dismissed as a matter of personal conscience, no matter how widespread its acceptance. Ethics, on the other hand, arises from societal or group commitments to principia of behavior.

I'll never go against my morals.

I do my research, and if I'm supporting something, then it's because it aligns with me morally and ethically.

A different vision of ethics is that of a collection of resources people can use to act better. The resources might be firm rules that could always be relied on. Or they might be ideals that could often be followed without thinking but that sometimes conflicted with one another.

As she read the ten commandments for the first time, a Chinese woman said, "I don't see how anyone can very well get on without them."

The rigid volunteer rules of right and wrong in sports are second only to religious faith in moral training.

In the past, the respect people had for religion meant that ethical practice was maintained through a majority following one religion or another. But this is no longer the case. We must therefore find some other way of establishing basic ethical principles.

There can be no question of holding forth on ethics. I have seen people behave badly with great morality and I note every day that integrity has no need of rules

A man cannot have character unless he lives within a fundamental system of morals that creates character.

It is impossible to maintain freedom and order and justice without religious and moral sanctions.

Search men's governing principles, and consider the wise, what they shun and what they cleave to.

The law functions as formal embodiment of a moral code, not as free-standing substitute for it.

The truth is, of course, that the curtness of the Ten Commandments is an evidence, not of the gloom and narrowness of a religion, but, on the contrary, of its liberality and humanity. It is shorter to state the things forbidden than the things permitted; precisely because most things are permitted, and only a few things are forbidden.

The importance of a high moral code, which is at the foundation of the Scout movement, cannot be stressed too highly.

Laws and principles are not for the times when there is no temptation: they are for such moments as this, when body and soul rise in mutiny against their rigour ... If at my convenience I might break them, what would be their worth?

I am, as I have always been, of the opinion that while the niceties of normal moral constraints should be our guides, they must not be our masters.

A person who is fundamentally honest doesn't need a code of ethics. The Ten Commandments and the Sermon on the Mount are all the ethical code anybody needs.

The rules of morality are not the conclusion of our reason.

Be fair in all your dealings, may it be in your family or in your business. At the end of it all, what matters is not how much money you make but how honest you are.